Grover tries to keep kids from getting closer to the end of the book. Elmo asks for kids’ help to slip past Grover. Build vocabulary with engaging activities. ($3.99)
Help a Sesame Street friend learn to deal with everyday challenges. Kids help the monster cope with problems by calming down, coming up with a plan, & trying the plan. (free)
Build students’ vocabulary & help them learn their ABC’s. Each word has a puzzle with talking letters & animations over the definition of the word. ($6.99)
This is a great visual app that requires simple touch to interact, & cause and effect. Effects that can be created are rocket, sparkle, power fingers, energy flow, atomic, & more. (free/$1.99)
Boards with patterns in a grid style layout, & pins that are used to complete the board. It requires very simple motor skills, & also engages the mind & brain. (iPad - $1.99)
Create storybooks & share to iBooks. We have a first grade teacher that uses this app with her class to create both class books & individual books. (iPad – free/$4.99)
Create & share lessons, by recording your voice while on your iPad. We have teachers using these apps to have students talk about how they are solving math problems. (iPad – free)
Snap or select a photo, record voice, & share! It’s that easy! This would be a powerful tool to use as a reflection piece after a field trip or a science experiment. (iPhone – free)
Students will want to practice reading those sight words with this app. They are asked to slice sight words by using their finger on the iPad screen. (free)
Snap a picture, mark it up, add labels, & share! Can be used in various subject areas, such as math or science. Students can label parts of a flower or label the perimeter of an image. (free)
Allow students time to explore, respond to pictures, & capture their voice responses to image prompts. This app reinforces storytelling, reading fluency, & retelling. (iPad – free/$2.99)
Students will enjoy exploring & responding to pictures & writing their response. This app reinforces storytelling, creativity, sentence structure, & voice. (iPad – free/$3.99)
Snap or select a photo, add a mouth, record your message, & play it back. There is an option to change the voice pitch & add more than one scene. (iPhone – free)
Preschoolers can practice their handwriting by spelling & tracing animal names with connecting the dots. Letter stroke guidance animations included. (iPad – free/$2.99)
A terrific app that expands the vocabulary of your students by using sight words, letter sounds, & animation to provide a fun way to help students remember the definition of a word. (free)
A great storytelling app where students can animate, draw, & create their own cartoons. It allows students to create 5 scenes to follow a story arc & select music based on the mood of the scene. (iPad – free/$19.99)
Help students spark their creative writing. Just tap a situation, a character, a setting, & an object to get started. Includes a built-in thesaurus. ($1.99)
For young students who are just starting to learn how to tell time. Convert from analog to digital, puzzles to learn parts of the clock, setting the time, stop the clock, & more. (free/$2.99)
With multiple levels & 8 games to choose from, this app gets students to practice their math facts in video game style. Choose from the Hurdle Chase, Magnet Escape, Egg Mania & more. (free/$1.99)
Students choose the right clock from a choice of multiple clocks within a time limit. As they master a level, the game advances to the next level with more clocks to choose from. (free)
Teach kids simple principles of programing with this fun & challenging logic game. Students have to program a robot arm to move crates from one point to another, with each task more complex than the last. (iPad – free)
From the American Museum of Natural History, this is a companion app for their exhibit, Creatures of Light: Nature’s Bioluminescence. This app takes a close look at organisms that produce light. Includes interactive animations, images, & videos. (iPad – free)
KIDS DISCOVER has a series of interactive iPad apps for elementary students. The Galaxies app allows students to tour the Milky Way, travel through galaxies, & more with interactive activities. (iPad – free)
Create an animation of a plant growing & more. Create a project, take photos, & create a video. This app also has a built-in timer to remind students when to take another picture for their project. (iPhone – free)
Select an image, & paint it with the different seasons. Watch as the images of nature turns from spring to winter. A companion app is Painting with Time: Climate Change ($1.99). ($0.99)
Students put together parts of an invention to make it work. An app to work with simple machines, & gives students a chance to experiment. Companion apps, the more challenging Pettson's Inventions 2 (free/$2.99), & Pettson's Inventions Deluxe (iPad – $3.99), which is 1 & 2 combined. (free/$2.99)
Help the little aliens learn about the different countries by collecting the flags to unlock arcade style games to help the aliens escape. (free/$2.99/$4.99)
Preschoolers learn how to count by going on a global adventure. They can watch videos, play music, & more by visiting friends in other counties. (free)
Covers relevant news of the day in a fun, engaging way for students. Students can explore images, videos, & games related to the article. Geared towards 3rd & 4th grade readers. Three free trail issues, before purchase of a subscription. (iPad – free/$19.99)
Learn about other countries from the kids that live there. This app includes simple phrases & counting in different languages, with students being able to record themselves. (free/$12.99)
A free atlas app that not only tells about countries from around the world, but also their famous landmarks & events. Everything is found by touch a symbol or flag & then it gives information about the area you touched. (free)
This app is one that makes students think about what strategy will gain them the most points. Students place numbers in a grid using several strategies at once. ($0.99)
This is a History Channel App that shows several historic sites & gives info about those sites near whatever city or state that you tell it to go to. (iPhone – free)
This app is a great eReader for all mobile devices. You need an Amazon account to purchase books, which can be stored in the cloud & downloaded to several devices. (free)
Check the weather anywhere in the world & get current conditions as well as the forecast for the next week. It has an interactive globe that you can find cities on or you can search for cities as well. (free/$0.99)
Record notes & audio at the same time. Better yet, have the audio synced with your notes. Insert text, drawings, photos, & highlight notes. (free/$4.99)
See it, hear it, write it, translate it; earn points, set goals, & practice in short increments while waiting in line or going through the car wash. (free/$2.99)
Nice clean journal look for a more attractive or engaging way to keep notes & incorporate photos. Will also share entries easily and sync with Evernote. (iPhone – free)
A beautiful drawing & painting app that allows students to create sketchbooks. Can be used to create notes, make sketches, & brainstorm to stay organized. (iPad – free)
There are seven simple tools to mark up images for analysis. Whether images are from film/theatre, personal snapshots for art class, historical images. (free)
Stop motion is fun to watch, but can be overwhelming to produce. This app, in its free form, keeps the process relatively simple, but polished. (free/$4.99)
Use this platform as a learning tool to share tidbits with students & colleagues; publicize what's going on in your classroom; follow professional mentors/organizations, posting assignment reminders & pop trivia. (free)
Have students plot their stories by adding in details of their characters, locations, scenes, ideas, & novels (theme, tone, POV, etc…) to link them together. (free)
Flowboard can be used to teach students about the design of a composition by creating an interactive presentation using images, PDFs, video, & typed texts. (iPad – free)
Create beautiful slide presentations with built-in templates. Haiku Deck limits how much text can be placed on the slides, to help students focus on the content. (free)
Provide comprehensive & prompt review of a student’s work by selecting from a preloaded checklist. No uploads are needed, but instead constructive feedback is emailed to the student. ($4.99)
Students can create a time limit for each section of a presentation with alerts to help them manage their time for the delivery of information. (iPhone – free)
This app translates the words of Shakespeare with a swipe of a finger from the original text to a more modern style. Also included is a dictionary to help with more translation activities. (free/$29.99)
A series of apps that features a matching, memory style vocabulary game. 3 levels of difficulty are included making it a great app for multiple grade levels. (iPad – free)
A calculator designed just to solve equations with fractions. This app also supports improper fractions to help students check their work. (free/$0.99)
One of the most comprehensive & user-friendly graphing calculators available. Can perform simple math operations, graph equations, perform scientific calculations, as well as work with statistics & matrices. (free/$2.99)
This app solves expressions as the student types, & features a memory system to store & recall answers with four different colored calculators. Also plots graphs in 2D & 3D. ($2.99)
Virtual math manipulatives that students can compare fractions, decimals, & percents. Students can also write on the screen to help solve a problem. (iPad – free)
Periodic table & element quiz with two modes of gameplay. Choose either matching symbol to name or name to symbol. Includes zoomable periodic table. (iPhone –free)
An exoplanet is a planet orbiting stars beyond our own solar system. This app is an interactive catalogue of known exoplanets & is updated when new discoveries are made. (free)
Stunning satellite images provide new perspective of our planet Earth. Features time-lapse images of location on Earth undergoing significant change. (iPad – free)
A platform to collaborative, explore, & document wildlife in your community. 3 modes – Spotting, Location-based Field Guide, & Field Missions. Visit their website at www.projectnoah.org. (iPhone – free)
From Evernote, Skitch allows you to annotate images & documents with arrows, stamps, shapes, text, & more. Annotate a PDF & photo. Share over email or sync with your Evernote account. (free)
Be a disease investigator by solving clues & analyzing data. Do you quarantine the sick? Check lab results? Move quickly to save lives. From the CDC. (iPad – free)
An interactive reference tool using Grays anatomy. High-resolution images & feature points which are labeled with short descriptions. Quiz included. (free/$1.99)
Quotes from political & historical figures of America, with images of primary sources. A question accompanies each quote to ask students to interpret the quote & civic issue being said. (iPad – free)
A time machine for exploring the ancient history of Earth by seeing what it looked like billions of years ago. Add layers of data such as temperature, biodiversity, day length, & more. (iPad – free)
In cooperation with the UNESCOWorld Heritage Centre, students can access 30,000 inspiring photos from around the world to celebrate its cultural diversity. (free)
Demand & supply is studied in every economics class. In this app students can study a demand & supply graph by making changes to the variables. Exercises are included. (free)
Great way for students to learn the amendments to Bill of Rights. Decide if clients have a right to a trail, match them with the right lawyer with the amendment expertise, & win the case. (iPad – free)
A real-time, anonymous polling tool over public questions & opinions from the U.S. Congress to MIT. Students can submit their own questions & see the results within a national map. (free)
Smithsonian Channel
Explore hundreds of videos over art, space, science, nature, culture, & history, & more from the Smithsonian. (iPhone/iPad–free)
A timeline with facts & photos over events in our world. The timeline can be expanded &/or condensed to allow students to see sequences of events. Explore topics over natural, world, & U.S. history. (free/$6.99)
Teach kids about emotions with helping them learn how to read expressions & body language. Three animal characters do this with lots of props. Dress them up & watch their reaction. ($2.99)
Great for fine motor development, does not mirror a typical scissor hold but must use two fingers to “cut” buttons off pockets as they are moving around on the screen. ($0.99/$1.99)
A role-playing game that practices social & emotional learning by interacting with characters, rebuilding Greenberry, & saving & collecting the Zim. (iPad – free)
100+ photos & videos with step-by-step instructions for scheduled activities & behaviors. You can also add a photo or video of your own to supplement the library. (iPhone – $4.99)
Play with 21 animals & see what they do when you tap them. Musical sounds & funny animations are used for each animal. (Ex – Can a dog breakdance? What would an elephant do in your bathroom?) ($2.99)
A music player that lets you slow down the song without changing the pitch. Helps children keep up with their favorite song & to sing along at their pace. (iPhone - $1.99)
A child-friendly keyboard that has a built-in word prediction & recognizes phonetic spelling. It has text to speech, customized word banks, & students can share their writing through Dropbox. (iPad – $28.99)
Learn core vocabulary for Science, Social Studies, Math, & Language Arts. This app helps to focus on word definitions while students put the words in order. Also available, Enchanted Dictionary 4-6th Grade. (iPad – $1.99)
Using text & audio, this hidden object game helps little ones race to find the matching photo to build their vocabulary. Can be played with 2 players at once. (free)
A great storytelling app where students can animate, draw, & create their own cartoons. It allows students to create 5 scenes to follow a story arc & select music based on the mood of the scene. (iPod – free/$19.99)
Use this app for digital storytelling with your students. A simple video creator app that allows students to use photos or videos to create narrated videos. Have students practice sequencing, articulation, & more. (Thanks to SpeechTechie for the great idea.) (free)
Top 10 Apps for 2013-2014
Table of Contents
Primary (PreK-5)
Early Childhood
Elementary
Primary Language Arts
Primary Math
Primary Science
Primary Social Studies
Secondary (6-12)
Middle School
High School
Secondary Language Arts
Secondary Math
Secondary Science
Secondary Social Studies
SPED
SPED Learners
Speech & Language Therapy
Last Updated - April 2014